Arizona silver belt., 1887-06-11
The Moon and the Weather.
From the Chicago News

dWhat's that got t5 do with itP' the reporter asked!
 "A good deal;" he answered. "It's dry m6oh. Whshe4er you see a moon lie on it's back it fever rains."
 The above. cohyefsation took place last Sunday afternoon, and within thirty-six hours thereafter the first rain in several weeks was falling.
 Of all surviving pseudo-sdpersti- tions that of the influence of the moon on the weather dies the hardest, and the belief that the so-callsd changes" of the moon are accompanied or fol- lowed by changes Tn the condition of the terrestrial atmosphere is still to be found among very large. hltibet indeed of otherwise educated asa ghi hghtensd people A rsEeht writer in the English Mechanic has examined the grounds of this belief and attri- butes it to the weather predictions in the aImanacs of the early part of the century.
 As to the moon changing, one would imagine, to hear the majority of people talk, that change" of the moon IS in some sense cognate with d conjuring trick, in winch the per fotb8ef;- aFtst showing that he has nothing Tn his hand, instantaneously produces an egg, an orange, or ball from.it. Now nothing could well be further from the truth than this; ~thB- fact being that the moon is always tHanging-.01 second before conjunc- tion she is waning, .01 second after it she is waxing, and so throughput her monthly path. When her (celsstiaD longitude is identical with that of the sun she Is said Tn the almanacs to be, new" when such longitude differs 90 degs. from the suns toward the east she is in her first quarter ;"' when they are separated by 80 degs. the moon is full" and when she has travelled to that point in her orbit in which she is 90 degs. to the west of the sun she is said to be in her "last euarter;" in each ease 1t bclng ss- sumed that she is viewed from the earth's center. The use of the word ''chanae," then. in connection with hss position in these four points of der orbit, Is solecism, pure and sim ule. 70 i.a,q.:,, ,.
 But" reepiS ats. heard toi say; las moon inauences'the tides, why shdtld it not affect the atmosphere too?" To winch the immediately obvious re- ply is that the tides are semi-diurnal nhgnomenon, so that, on this princi- ple, the weather ought to change twice a day also-a gohelusion too absurd to be entertained Nevertheless, the moon does 1nfuencE ths atmosphere by. causing the productions in'it,ot tides SC minute as, under ardinafy cir cumstances, to be masked by other fluctuations. The existence of these atmospheric tides was first definitely estat,-hed by the observations of the late Pr1G. panlell, but if these minute tides iaA,isnced the weather in the slightest degree, it must .chaAge twice a lay-a supposition toe ridiculous to merit a notiee.:a i'.H ':
 The .moon on her back" as sHstth- CT sign would appear to be good deal like the old weman's indigo test--if the dye was pure, "'twould either sink or swim, she disremembered which," Mir. Forepaugh says it's & "dry moon," but in many part of the country, and unifetntly in England, the. belief prevails that when the young moon IS lying on her back in other words, when the line joining her cusps is nearly or quite parallel to the horizon, she is holding, water, and rain will certainly fEiIow. How either belief arese it would be, idle to speculate, but the explanation of the phenomenon itself is sufficiently sirl- pie. In the outset the moon is never much more than degS. either te the north or south of the ecliptic, or ap- parent annual path of the sun through the heavens. Now the line joining her cusps (the sharn points of her cres- ent) IS always square to great circle passing through tic suh and moon. Two minutes study of a celestial globe will show how variable is the inclination of the ecliptic to the hori- zon, and consequently that of the line joining the cusps of ths moon also.
 Finally, the most alab abOrate compar- isons of meteorological records made in France and in England (where the Greenwich obssryations for forty years
 were carefully co1lated with the moons phases during that period, have suficed to show that no cOnnec
 tion whatever exists between them
 The solitary observable effect. of th'
 moon upon our atrkbsphere was be
 ,;A..0a h.. C,r 1ohn Rsrschal tn he ax